Tuesday, Daegan was tired. He had trouble staying awake all day and that night he went to bed earlier than usual. He didn’t even make it to dinner.

Wednesday morning, Daegan woke up late.

Really late. I actually had trouble waking him up and it was almost 11 before he was awake enough to eat breakfast.

When I pulled him out of his crib, he was extremely hot to the touch and a thermometer confirmed he had a fever.

After he had eaten, he started throwing up. His color was terrible, his skin had turned an awful shade of gray and his lips were purple. His breathing was slightly labored.

I considered just keeping an eye on him at home, but ultimately I decided to have him checked out by a doctor. Because his pediatrician closes early on Wednesdays, I had to take him to the immediate care. After evaluating him, the doctor there recommended that I take him to the emergency room.

I started to get a little more worried at that point. We went to the ER and he was given an IV for hydration. They ran blood and urine tests, and ordered a chest x-ray.

His blood glucose level came back in the high 300’s and he had sugar in his urine, telltale signs of Type I Diabetes. He still had a fever and his white blood cell count was elevated, so the doctors suspected he had some sort of infection.

After the initial test results came back, the ER doctor decided to have Daegan transferred to another hospital an hour away that had a higher level pediatric care unit. .Before the transfer, Daegan was given a large dose of long-acting insulin to help lower his blood sugars.

I followed the ambulance to the other hospital. When we got there, the paramedics wheeled him up to his room on the pediatric floor. It was interesting to see how they transport small children, they actually strap their car seats to the stretcher.

That night, Daegan’s blood sugar dropped dangerously low twice. The pediatric endocrinologist seems to think that he received too high of an insulin dose and that he should have been given a short-acting insulin versus the longer-acting version.

Additional blood work also revealed that his potassium levels were low as well, so he was put on a potassium pump overnight.

Since then, Daegan’s blood glucose levels seem to have been slowly improving on their own, without any additional insulin. As of now, the doctor is diagnosing him as pre-diabetic and we are now going to be monitoring his blood sugars regularly.

Hopefully his levels will remain normal. However, since Daegan has just been diagnosed with Pituitary Dwarfism, the doctor warned us that the growth hormone treatment he will be starting in the next few weeks can affect his blood sugar and could cause him to become a full-blown diabetic. Also, any type of illness or infection could have the potential to cause an autoimmune response that may further impair his ability to produce adequate amounts of insulin.

It seems like for now can just hope for the best, but expect that at some point he will become insulin-dependent.

As of right now, we are still at the hospital. The plan is to be discharged by the end of the day so we can get home and be done with this unexpected three day “vacation”.